Some parts of this post will be silly and not very-serious, and some will be very serious. It's Brain Droppings, the nature of it is chaotic and not well-organized. If you are the (probably non-existent) people that found this blog post before today (1/14/2016), know that I did not intend to publish this post before today, and what you read was even more disorganized and incomplete. Buckle up, we have a lot of ground to cover!
Brain Droppings I
Brain Droppings II
Brain Droppings III
Firstly, just watch this video. Just go watch it.
The two things I really took away with the video are:
1. While some things seem to make no sense and look inefficient, be mindful about just how large of a problem it really is compared to other problems.
2. When we casually move from one issue to the next, nothing ever gets changed. Outbursts of anger followed by amnesia is not constructive.
Next, why don't you listen to this track by the London Philaharmonic of 'Far Horizons', a track by Jeremy Soule for Skyrim, while you read the rest of this blog post? It will enhance your reading experience my 13.3985%, guaranteed or your money back!
Free Will:
My opinion of free will is this: Anything and everything we can and will do is bound by the state of molecules in the universe before our birth. Physics does the rest.We are like a computer which reacts to inputs, doing different things depending on the state of the molecules inside the computer. What the computer will do can be predicted. If we break it down to quantum mechanics, we simply get more chaos and uncertainty, not more free will.
We are the sum of our experiences and physiology which we get by chance. Free will is an illusion. When a brain tumor forces a man to kill his family, we understand the man is simply unlucky. Similarly, I see criminals as malfunctioning people who got the wrong environment, the wrong genetics, the wrong physical causalities that compels a person to commit the crime they did. They could not have done otherwise given those inputs.
This doesn't mean that punishment is therefore useless. Nothing good is lost and something good is gained. We now have a basis for incredible amounts of empathy. Vengeance now makes no sense. Our goal now is to rehabilitate, not to punish for the sake of it.
Punishment that works well only prevents a second offense, whereas treatment attempts to prevent the first offense. If you've committed a crime and seeking help just gets you arrested, you're not very likely to seek help. This ties in well with my belief on free will, which depicts criminals as unlucky people born with the wrong genes and given the wrong upbringing to cause a criminal to form.
And with that mindset, I think I am more open to seeing pedophiles as unlucky people: They are people which, through no fault of their own, get sexual pleasure from children. People don't really choose their sexual fetishes or the way their brains were wired. Of course, most fetishes are harmless. Unfortunately, some are not if indulged in. And these people have to deal with this urge their entire lives. Some of them might feel a lot of guilt for even having such desires. Many of them plan to never, ever touch a child inappropriately. It's not fair. Obviously, it sure as hell isn't fair for their victims.
Random Crap:
Random Crap:
Money can’t buy happiness, but I’d rather be depressed in a Lexus. ;)
Welcome to the internet, where men are men, women are men, and children are the FBI!
It's always annoyed me when people attack others by twisting the name of their side or their name. Like "Libtard". Or "Richard Dorkins". Or "Stefan Moldydew". How old are you guys? Did I step into a portal back into my elementary school years? What the actual fuck?
SJWs and the Regressive Left are the Tea Parties of the Left.
The internet lets people access information from all types of sources and people. Some people take this opportunity to shelter themselves, to only visit communities that reinforce one's worldview. Personally, I find Facebook's trending feature to be useful. I have read many arguments from people of different point of views.
Welcome to the internet, where men are men, women are men, and children are the FBI!
It's always annoyed me when people attack others by twisting the name of their side or their name. Like "Libtard". Or "Richard Dorkins". Or "Stefan Moldydew". How old are you guys? Did I step into a portal back into my elementary school years? What the actual fuck?
SJWs and the Regressive Left are the Tea Parties of the Left.
The internet lets people access information from all types of sources and people. Some people take this opportunity to shelter themselves, to only visit communities that reinforce one's worldview. Personally, I find Facebook's trending feature to be useful. I have read many arguments from people of different point of views.
That settles it then. I'm moving to Mercury so I can get birthday presents every 88 Earth days.
'[Some] people are so intent on leaving their mark on the world, they don't care if it's a scar.' That is the quote from John Green which Derek Muller (of Veritasium) referenced when talking about the Paris attacks. I think it's kindda fitting.
The study of physics is actually atoms trying to understand themselves.
It seems to me that either the universe always existed or that it had a beginning, therefore there was a period of true nothingness, not even space itself. Either possibility seems impossible.
Did you know that nuts are fruits? The name 'pecan' comes from the Algonquian word meaning 'a nut requiring a stone to crack'. Ironically, pecan is not technically a nut, but a drupe. It is one of the most recently domesticated crops on a large scale.
The study of physics is actually atoms trying to understand themselves.
It seems to me that either the universe always existed or that it had a beginning, therefore there was a period of true nothingness, not even space itself. Either possibility seems impossible.
Did you know that nuts are fruits? The name 'pecan' comes from the Algonquian word meaning 'a nut requiring a stone to crack'. Ironically, pecan is not technically a nut, but a drupe. It is one of the most recently domesticated crops on a large scale.
Do you worry about general AI? I worry about general AI. Although, I also worry about what I'm going to eat for lunch.
"The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens work." - Galileo, on the Bible and the conflict between religious dogmas of his time and his discoveries.
Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is, you're stupid and you make bad decisions.
How do you stop illegal surveillance? Why, you just make it legal, of course!
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Then, if knowledge is power, what is the NSA?
"The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens work." - Galileo, on the Bible and the conflict between religious dogmas of his time and his discoveries.
Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is, you're stupid and you make bad decisions.
How do you stop illegal surveillance? Why, you just make it legal, of course!
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Then, if knowledge is power, what is the NSA?
If people pretty much only have two legs or less (due to tragedies, etc), wouldn't the average amount of legs people have be below 2? That's awesome. The next time I meet a good looking girl, I'll open by asking her if she knew that I have an above-average amount of legs.
A man walks into the bar and orders ten drinks. The bartender says, "Well that is an order of magnitude".
I'm convinced that our house would be better if the front yard didn't exist and the house ate up the space the front yard used to be a larger house.
I heard an idea that the Vikings traded some things with the Native Americans back in the day. For example, they got some cheese. Word is, the Vikings came back and furiously killed the natives... possibly because the Vikings were lactose intolerant? (From the Vikings point of view, they were poisoned!) That's funny, but also such a sad reason for killing.
Actually, calling people sheep more often and stridently doesn't actually make you look more enlightened. It makes you look like an ass, and nobody wants to listen to what you have to say. If your wish for change is larger than your ego, you would try to explain your position in a way that doesn't cause people to type in all caps.
I don't understand why some people think buying $1000+ headphones is crazy. Crazy in that differences noted maybe placebo, I can dig. I think some people on the internet, mostly Youtube, are young and do not have significant disposable income. We are used to some things costing a lot and some things costing much less, when really the only thing that matters is one thing: What is the dollar to happiness ratio of something you want to buy? Consider the opportunity cost of that money. Personally I find it funny that $1000 headphones are crazy, yet spending ten times that, easily, on making your house look just a bit nicer, or ten times that figure to get a cooler looking house, is somehow okay. I mean, I think it's all okay, really, apart from the fact that maybe it's time to donate to charity at that point. I think people believe they themselves are open-minded people, but in reality they are not. Their minds open up to possibilities which are already mostly accepted by the mainstream or the younger generation.
I don't understand why some people think buying $1000+ headphones is crazy. Crazy in that differences noted maybe placebo, I can dig. I think some people on the internet, mostly Youtube, are young and do not have significant disposable income. We are used to some things costing a lot and some things costing much less, when really the only thing that matters is one thing: What is the dollar to happiness ratio of something you want to buy? Consider the opportunity cost of that money. Personally I find it funny that $1000 headphones are crazy, yet spending ten times that, easily, on making your house look just a bit nicer, or ten times that figure to get a cooler looking house, is somehow okay. I mean, I think it's all okay, really, apart from the fact that maybe it's time to donate to charity at that point. I think people believe they themselves are open-minded people, but in reality they are not. Their minds open up to possibilities which are already mostly accepted by the mainstream or the younger generation.
Yes? I'll take that as a no!
Why is the alphabet in alphabetical order? What makes that order of letters the correct one?
Clickbait for you, clickbait for me! Clickbait for everybody! I can already think of a grand new title for my Skylake overclocking guide:
Clickbait for you, clickbait for me! Clickbait for everybody! I can already think of a grand new title for my Skylake overclocking guide:
Supercharge your CPU with these 3 tricks Intel doesn't want you to know!!!!!1111
And seriously, what the hell is up with numbering things in your article? 5 reasons why blah blah blah. I HATEEEEE these clickbaity sites. Their content sucks, their content delivery sucks, their ads suck. Everything about them is sucky. Now I want to title all of my posts with the most boring titles ever just to counteract this crap.
Time for a rant on journalism and medicine. You knew this was coming. You already know I have a negative opinion of shitty headlines. It's not a surprise then, that when people summarize the results of a study in a broad, sensationalist or incomplete way, I get angry. Studies are hard. We have to look at how it was funded, who did the research, how it was done (there are many ways to do a study), and what the results actually are. If you can summarize the study in one sentence, the summary is incomplete. There are many ways to manipulate data. For example, take that bacon scare. Let's say eating bacon means a 20% increase in chance of a particular type of cancer. Let's just assume the study was done correctly, blah blah. What if I told you, that the 20% figure is a relative risk increase, and what scientists mean by 20% is a 20% increase of a very small chance of getting that particular type of cancer? It's the same thing with the autism and anti-depressant study. An 87% increase in relative risk of an absolute risk of 1% of getting a child with autism is a total of 1.87% chance of getting a baby with autism. And we have to consider other factors, that correlation is not causation. Maybe depressed mothers are what's to blame for autism. Maybe it's a specific type or brand of medication. Maybe skipping the treatment for mental health can cause higher fatalities elsewhere. I am tired of people who think they know more about medicine than scientists and think studies are meaningless because they appear to contradict. Maybe they do to them, because they only read headlines and they have no background in medicine. Maybe some studies do contradict and we need a larger sample size. Either way, science is complicated.
Time for a rant on journalism and medicine. You knew this was coming. You already know I have a negative opinion of shitty headlines. It's not a surprise then, that when people summarize the results of a study in a broad, sensationalist or incomplete way, I get angry. Studies are hard. We have to look at how it was funded, who did the research, how it was done (there are many ways to do a study), and what the results actually are. If you can summarize the study in one sentence, the summary is incomplete. There are many ways to manipulate data. For example, take that bacon scare. Let's say eating bacon means a 20% increase in chance of a particular type of cancer. Let's just assume the study was done correctly, blah blah. What if I told you, that the 20% figure is a relative risk increase, and what scientists mean by 20% is a 20% increase of a very small chance of getting that particular type of cancer? It's the same thing with the autism and anti-depressant study. An 87% increase in relative risk of an absolute risk of 1% of getting a child with autism is a total of 1.87% chance of getting a baby with autism. And we have to consider other factors, that correlation is not causation. Maybe depressed mothers are what's to blame for autism. Maybe it's a specific type or brand of medication. Maybe skipping the treatment for mental health can cause higher fatalities elsewhere. I am tired of people who think they know more about medicine than scientists and think studies are meaningless because they appear to contradict. Maybe they do to them, because they only read headlines and they have no background in medicine. Maybe some studies do contradict and we need a larger sample size. Either way, science is complicated.
There are a lot of crazy things we know which we have become accustomed to. When astronauts float in the ISS, they are actually perpetually falling. We are all glowing, just not in the visible spectrum. If Planck's length is the shortest distance possible, what happens when the length of the electromagnetic wave reaches that length? We're all fucking living on a giant piece of rock spinning at close to 1000 miles per hour and if the rock were to stop spinning, we would all fly east at close to that speed (depending on how close to the equator you happen to be). There are realms of dangers invisible to us, from radiation to a whole world of animalcules, little teeny weeny living things that are all around us and inside us, and yes, outnumber us in terms of the number of cells we have versus theirs. And viruses, which aren't living yet still evolves and kills and reproduces. Isn't the world a crazy place?
Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about clouds seem to be stationary and calm - yet when sped up to a moderate pace, look like the sky is a river flowing. No wonder humans have a hard time grasping timescales of millions and billions of years when thinking about evolution.
Did you know that re-fried beans aren't actually fried more than once? It came from a mistranslation. The more you know.
Is competitive gaming a sport? The Olympic committee thinks chess is a sport. Is golfing a sport? Whether competitive gaming classifies as a sport doesn't have any practical implications. It's semantics, it's just a classification problem. Misnomers happen all the time. Whatever competitive gaming is classified in the Taxonomy of Activities doesn't change what competitive gaming is.
And here is TotalBiscuit explaining Twitch:
Reading the Terms of Service is like reverse-masturbation: 95% of people don't do it, and the 5% that say they do are lying.
When I look at giveaways I often think about how long it takes to enter. How long would it take for me to enter my email address and like a few posts of theirs and how much mental energy do I have to spend to go back and unlike the page afterwards? If the prize is a thousand dollars worth of gear and there are ten thousand applications, why the hell am I spending over a minute of my time to earn an average of ten cents? So, I don't even bother anymore. ._. "Free" giveaways are never free.
There is a good correlation between the number of Greek alphabets you use in math and how smart you look.
In the long run, we're all dead. - John Maynard Keynes
Being wise and smart means knowing the entire debate was a waste of time and more of a dick measuring contest. Gotta pick and choose which debates are worth having.
Sam Harris brought up the idea of 'moral luck' in a podcast with Joe Rogan. Many people have driven when they've had one drink too many. Most people get away with it. But a few people simply get unlucky (in a sense) and kill somebody with their car. In other words, some people end up committing horrific crimes doing similar things many people do. There is an element of chance to this. Of course, how drunk you get before you decide not to drive at all is a major factor.
The mythology section of a bookstore is the graveyard of dead gods.
And here is a 30 second cutscene where Geralt of Rivia, the main protagonist of the video game, Witcher 3, reflects on events of a particular quest. I find these flashback moments of the game, along with the particular quest it references, to be one of the better moments of video game stories.
Chemotherapy isn't good for you. So when you feel bad, as I am feeling now, you think, 'Well that is a good thing because it's supposed to be poison. If it's making the tumor feel this queasy, then I'm OK with it.' - Christopher Hitchens
Neil Degrasse Tyson Perspective:
Maybe some aliens never managed to go interstellar because their planet is too large and it takes too much energy to leave the planet. And by the time the light has traveled to our telescopes, their civilization has died out already
Wonder what aliens think about our Universal Time.
Mysteries of the Universe: If I take a root beer and put it in a square glass, is it just a beer now?
In Chemistry class the cylinders know more than you do because they're already graduated. Thermometers know more than cylinders though, because they have many degrees.
If people left carrots, celery, & hot tea for Santa on the table rather than milk & cookies, I bet he’d be much, much thinner.
I was once anti-biotic. But lately I've been more pro-biotic after reading more about their culture.
I wonder why nobody has ever called pre-historic cave paintings Graffiti. Maybe that’s precisely what it was back then.
After Koalas, Australian animals seem to come in only three varieties: those who want to eat you, inject venom in you, or hop.
Just an FYI: Stepping on an Ant is equivalent to a creature 10,000 times more massive than a Blue Whale stepping on you.
I wonder if Accountants feel the urge to represent negative Temperatures in parenthesis.
My favorite line in "The Martian" trailer, uttered by Matt Damon, is “I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.”
Let's end this Neil deGrasse Tyson section with my favorite Neil deGrasse Tyson moment.
Let's get back to the silly random stuff! It's party time!
If a graphics card costs an arm and a leg, I think that says something negative about the value of my arms and legs... (Although, when I commented on Sennheiser's $55,000 headphones, I had to say ehh. It's getting there.)
Maybe sadists and masochists can come together and have this weird, but pleasurable relationship.
Why is it ok to want to look pretty, but not ok to want to look smart?
Maybe sadists and masochists can come together and have this weird, but pleasurable relationship.
Why is it ok to want to look pretty, but not ok to want to look smart?
As someone who is staunchly pro-life I would like to defund wars.
With billions of people on earth, I feel bad having any level of pride in anything, because somewhere, sometime, some large group of people have done it and did it better.
With billions of people on earth, I feel bad having any level of pride in anything, because somewhere, sometime, some large group of people have done it and did it better.
American politics is like Kingdom Hearts. Nobody gets what's going on, you fight over health, and Donald is there.
Why do I need a third party app to make Windows clock show seconds by default?
If you're not failing, you're not even trying. To get something you've never had, you need to do something you've never done. - Denzel Washington
A war on Christmas is a war on presents, and I won't stand for that.
Playing Skyrim at night with soup, garlic bread, and hot chocolate while it's raining outside is great. Highly recommended.
Yo dawg, I got Bill on speed dial. I'll tell him to close the internet for ya', it's no prob. (In case you don't understand the joke: Donald Trump suggested 'closing off the internet' by calling people like Bill Gates.)
They say you die twice. Once when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later, when somebody says your name for the last time. - Bansky
In response to a thread I made regarding the FREEDOM Act, I said this:
"I'm trying to get the word out there in my own little way through this news story, which is why I am disappointed that my news article isn't very popular, even after I've bumped it. I think most people are of decent level of intelligence, it's just lack of knowledge and lack of interest.
It's like... who actually cares what the next AMD card is going to be called? Of course the NSA problem doesn't directly affect us today, losing our rights is less important than the next generation of graphics cards. It's not just due to the age demographics of LTT, it's much the same thing in OCN although OCN doesn't allow for anything remotely political.
I don't think it's that people think the NSA mass surveillance is good, very little people actually think that, it's just nobody actually cares. People are just interested in their hobbies, that's it, everybody is like that. Same with me, it's not like I'm actively campaigning to end world hunger. My co-worker asked me why I don't talk much, and I'm like, sure, let's talk about AI! Do you worry about AI taking over all of our jobs in the future? And then they quietly back away."
If anybody asks me about college, I'm going to reply by saying that I go to the College of Winterhold from now on. Great way to shut out conversation.
Making posts like these show me that I've learned some things and thought about some more things each year. It makes me feel better that I'm sitting in front of the computer all day.
"It's not the end of the world. But you can see it from here." -Eliza Cassan, Deus Ex: Human Revolution
There is a vitamin that vegans have to be careful to consume enough of. It's vitamin B12, a class of chemicals with a cobalt atom, yes, a cobalt atom - in the middle. It's a complicated chemical that needs to be obtained from bacteria, or sources that have eaten the bacteria or eaten those who have eaten the bacteria. Fermentated foods is one way to get that stuff in your system.
In America, we shoot turkey in November. In Russia, Turkey shoots you! (Referring to the incident where Turkey shot down Russian planes at around Thanksgiving time.)
Imagine if you are teaching somebody who is just as intelligent as you are, but specializes in another field - Your goal is to get them up to speed with what you know. That is what Steven Pinker said his professor once taught him. That is how you teach without looking arrogant.
I read something Nancy Gibbs wrote: '..so many conversations are fast, furious, in binary form - Istael or Palestine? Hillary or Bernie? Taylor or Nicki? When so many sound so certain about so much, there is little left to talk about, no interest, no appetite, just attitude.'
"You must be a heatsink!" "Why?" "Because I'm a huge fan." #Computingpickuptips
What if men objectify women over looks and women objectify men over their utility?
There's nothing creepier than a politician trying to appear relatable in a video...
My interests tend to be esoteric and niche. For example, Mugen itself is esoteric and niche already. But testing and ranking characters by strength by running Ordo to calculate ratings from a 150x150 Excel spreadsheet? Or Fallout: New Vegas, a mainstream game. But every time I make a thread talking about some game mechanic I noticed which everybody seems to have missed, or calculating the damage per second of weapons taking into account all the proper factors, I end up talking to an empty room.
During the moment of orgasm, I believe (and I might be wrong about this) that the release of prolactin in males suppresses the sex drive. I've always been fascinated by this. In an instant, how I feel and what I want can change drastically. I guess it's not that crazy considering that if a tiger were to pop up behind me, my mental state would change right quick. But still. I think it's pretty crazy.
I actually don't fully recall what I wrote in the blog post about The Fappening, but I think I was a little too harsh on the celebrities. I was reading some forum where people were talking about a leak, and some person felt that Jennifer Lawrence's pictures of her posing nude were okay, but that one picture of her with a face full of cum just destroyed his/her opinion of her. On some level I feel a little bad for bringing this back into people's attention. I also had a tough luck attitude towards those women. On the other hand, what is wrong with wanting cum on your face? This is a legitimate question. Don't judge her for what she likes with regards to sex. It's weird how we have these rules for sex, where these, these, and these types of fucking is okay, but these other types, totally not okay. Now, I didn't know a picture that was THIS sensitive was leaked for her, and I read about her response to the issue. So yeah, I'm coming around to her way of thinking. While it's dumb to upload your sensitive photos on the internet, she did keep it under lock and key and in a place that I would have thought would've been reasonably safe for storing data.
Making posts like these show me that I've learned some things and thought about some more things each year. It makes me feel better that I'm sitting in front of the computer all day.
"It's not the end of the world. But you can see it from here." -Eliza Cassan, Deus Ex: Human Revolution
There is a vitamin that vegans have to be careful to consume enough of. It's vitamin B12, a class of chemicals with a cobalt atom, yes, a cobalt atom - in the middle. It's a complicated chemical that needs to be obtained from bacteria, or sources that have eaten the bacteria or eaten those who have eaten the bacteria. Fermentated foods is one way to get that stuff in your system.
In America, we shoot turkey in November. In Russia, Turkey shoots you! (Referring to the incident where Turkey shot down Russian planes at around Thanksgiving time.)
Imagine if you are teaching somebody who is just as intelligent as you are, but specializes in another field - Your goal is to get them up to speed with what you know. That is what Steven Pinker said his professor once taught him. That is how you teach without looking arrogant.
I read something Nancy Gibbs wrote: '..so many conversations are fast, furious, in binary form - Istael or Palestine? Hillary or Bernie? Taylor or Nicki? When so many sound so certain about so much, there is little left to talk about, no interest, no appetite, just attitude.'
"You must be a heatsink!" "Why?" "Because I'm a huge fan." #Computingpickuptips
What if men objectify women over looks and women objectify men over their utility?
There's nothing creepier than a politician trying to appear relatable in a video...
My interests tend to be esoteric and niche. For example, Mugen itself is esoteric and niche already. But testing and ranking characters by strength by running Ordo to calculate ratings from a 150x150 Excel spreadsheet? Or Fallout: New Vegas, a mainstream game. But every time I make a thread talking about some game mechanic I noticed which everybody seems to have missed, or calculating the damage per second of weapons taking into account all the proper factors, I end up talking to an empty room.
During the moment of orgasm, I believe (and I might be wrong about this) that the release of prolactin in males suppresses the sex drive. I've always been fascinated by this. In an instant, how I feel and what I want can change drastically. I guess it's not that crazy considering that if a tiger were to pop up behind me, my mental state would change right quick. But still. I think it's pretty crazy.
I actually don't fully recall what I wrote in the blog post about The Fappening, but I think I was a little too harsh on the celebrities. I was reading some forum where people were talking about a leak, and some person felt that Jennifer Lawrence's pictures of her posing nude were okay, but that one picture of her with a face full of cum just destroyed his/her opinion of her. On some level I feel a little bad for bringing this back into people's attention. I also had a tough luck attitude towards those women. On the other hand, what is wrong with wanting cum on your face? This is a legitimate question. Don't judge her for what she likes with regards to sex. It's weird how we have these rules for sex, where these, these, and these types of fucking is okay, but these other types, totally not okay. Now, I didn't know a picture that was THIS sensitive was leaked for her, and I read about her response to the issue. So yeah, I'm coming around to her way of thinking. While it's dumb to upload your sensitive photos on the internet, she did keep it under lock and key and in a place that I would have thought would've been reasonably safe for storing data.
How I would feel about the breach of somebody's privacy depends on how private the information is, which in turn has to do with how well the secret is guarded. If somebody accidentally or purposefully left their nudes in a public place but in an envelope marked "private", I would feel a lot less sympathy for that person versus Jennifer Lawrence's situation. If you're too careless to guard your own secrets, you are either dumb or you don't care that much in the first place. But she DID guard her secrets. And those photos are more sensitive than I thought.
Podcasts sometimes take me for a ride to an unexpected place. The podcast with Joe Rogan and Daniele Bolelli was such an occasion. The idea is that even if a guy knows what to say, if he comes to the dating scene from a place of need and desperation, it somehow oozes out, and the other sex will feel that something's not quite right. Daniele's solution is to get some hookers... that way the guy isn't as desperate when they see a hot girl. Sometimes people act differently simply because the girl is hot, even if it's clear that nothing will ever happen between the two. Maybe if the guy knows he can get laid with another hot woman, the guy will be more relaxed, more true to himself when he interacts with these women. Then they brought up the idea of a woman who has education and money and comes at prostitution from a place of power. Here the woman gets to pick her clients, and might even look at the business as dating guys and sleeping around, but making bank at the same time.
These podcasts show me different perspectives on life. Like Daniele Bolelli talking about how strange it is to have English, which is to the point, compared to his native Italian, which is more flowery and wordy and flows. Or Christopher Ryan, who talks about his time in Spain, where people have a different perspective on life. If you want a burger and a shake, buy it and eat it outside, there's no need for a carryout. The server might take her time to get to you because she's on her phone with her boyfriend. Women know that men like women, and when men look at women they take it as a compliment, instead of thinking that some guy is 'eye raping them'. Or his studies on various cultures with very different views on sex and babies, like this one where the woman gets her own room, called the 'flower room', where she gets to sleep with whoever she wants (but the man must be gone by breakfast time the next day), and the family members take care of the children and the guy can just go wherever and leave. Different perspectives.
"She's only with you because of your money!"
"Well, good thing I have a lot of money then!"
"Well, good thing I have a lot of money then!"
A while back, a marine was reprimanded for peeing on a dead guy. We have this image of this ideal marine that stands up straight and has a perfectly pristine suit. But you don’t get a killer from that. You get a killer from somebody who has accepted their new reality and watched their friends get killed and gets so much hatred for the enemy. I think we are so detached from the violence to the point where we feel it's fine to kill somebody and launch drone strikes, but it's not okay to pee on them.
Death, Humility, and Life:
Living is its own reward.
There is only one person you have to live the rest of your life with: Yourself. Don't live the rest of your life with an asshole.
It’s one thing to say ‘Many people know things I do not, and those people don’t know much either compared to the universe’… It’s another to internalize it. So in that respect I think humility takes some time to sink in. I think that's where knowledge and wisdom are different.
The dummies that exist in the world don’t matter. Neither do the ants which are far dumber than the dummies in the world. They are all irrelevant. Doesn’t mean I need this false humility either. I do know some things. Rather, humility should come from an honest assessment of one’s place in the world.
If karma is true, then the good you do which goes unrewarded deserves no reward and the people that do bad things and get rewarded deserved it. The fact that life isn't fair makes us strive to impose justice and reward the good when we actually see it. It allows us to appreciate it when it occurs and work harder to make sure it stays.
"...black holes ain't as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up – there's a way out." - Stephen Hawking
Everybody has their blind spots, everybody is wrong about something. I'm sure we've all looked up to or highly regarded somebody only to find out that they have a bad stance on a particular topic. So then I ask myself: What am I horribly wrong about?
...I am half interested, half worried about this.
Maybe, like most people, when I face a serious illness and I'm looking at Death in the face, I will realize just how pointless all of my worries here are, and how pointless it is to be anything but myself. Sometimes I wonder... if we all listed the 3 biggest worries we have in our lives, how different would they be?
Living is its own reward.
There is only one person you have to live the rest of your life with: Yourself. Don't live the rest of your life with an asshole.
It’s one thing to say ‘Many people know things I do not, and those people don’t know much either compared to the universe’… It’s another to internalize it. So in that respect I think humility takes some time to sink in. I think that's where knowledge and wisdom are different.
The dummies that exist in the world don’t matter. Neither do the ants which are far dumber than the dummies in the world. They are all irrelevant. Doesn’t mean I need this false humility either. I do know some things. Rather, humility should come from an honest assessment of one’s place in the world.
If karma is true, then the good you do which goes unrewarded deserves no reward and the people that do bad things and get rewarded deserved it. The fact that life isn't fair makes us strive to impose justice and reward the good when we actually see it. It allows us to appreciate it when it occurs and work harder to make sure it stays.
"...black holes ain't as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up – there's a way out." - Stephen Hawking
Everybody has their blind spots, everybody is wrong about something. I'm sure we've all looked up to or highly regarded somebody only to find out that they have a bad stance on a particular topic. So then I ask myself: What am I horribly wrong about?
...I am half interested, half worried about this.
Maybe, like most people, when I face a serious illness and I'm looking at Death in the face, I will realize just how pointless all of my worries here are, and how pointless it is to be anything but myself. Sometimes I wonder... if we all listed the 3 biggest worries we have in our lives, how different would they be?
Here is a summarized transcript of a tech podcast I listen to. Jason Calacanis, an American internet entrepreneur and investor, talked about the death of his friend here. I think the conversation is very interesting and profound. It impacted the way I looked at life. I am sharing this in hopes that maybe it will positively impact yours as well.
Jason: ...we live in a world in this industry of narcissistic champions of the world, and it's all about the singular person, whether it is Elon, Satya, Bill Gates, or whoever it is. Some people just go about it in a quiet way, and he was that guy who just went about it in a quiet way and was a mensch. We can all take a lesson, like, everyone take a note.
Owen: The best part of hearing you talk about a friend like that is that it makes you think about yourself. Man, should I be doing better? I could be doing better. I should go hug my kids this week, like extra because it's the biggest thing.
Jason: Life is very perplexing, you know? It's very perplexing when the best person you know goes first. That's what I have been struggling with the last 48 hours. Why does the guy who is the best go first? It doesn't make any sense. Then you think, gosh, the poor kids are going to have to grow up hearing the stories of how great their dad was. It's horrible and tragic, but also great that his legacy is great. Even the Facebook page is very powerful.
Leo: That's a phenomenal thing that that exists. That's a really great thing to have. His kids can read this 10 years from now.
Jason: It's just hard to comprehend. I think about the unfairness of death, and I don't know if any of us will be able to comprehend. After 911 I had this very existential crisis being a New Yorker... Like, why did these people die, and how is it fair that these people died, and what does it mean? You don't get over it, but it changes the way that you live and the way you treat people around you. A lot of you people know me because I am a public person. I haven't always been the best person, I haven't always been nice to people in my writing, I have kind of been a bit of a brawler in my life, and I have been reassessing that over the last couple of years and trying to be a better person, and better to other people.
Georgia: What will be your legacy?
Leo: Anne Lemotte wrote a book, "All New People". She said that every 100 years it's all new people. What that really reminded me of was that of course some of us go sooner than others, we are all gone sooner than later really. But what we have is remarkable is that we are all alive in this space. This was our cohort of people that we got to share the planet with. It includes people like him, like Goldie, like Steve Jobs, the people that we know around us. Some of us are going to go sooner than others, but really we are all in this cohort. This is our group, and in 100 years we are all going to be gone. So let's celebrate this cohort because we have lived with some amazing people in our group, our cohort.
Jason: And we have lived in an amazing time. I had this really deep conversation with my wife, and I was like, you know, all of the success, and I have lucked into so many great things in my life, what am I going to do with this last 10-20 years, or months, or weeks, or days? It's like, holy shit, I need to start really thinking about this.
Leo: It's not that long. Even if it's 40-50 years, it is long, but it goes by really quickly.
Georgia: The coolest thing I've ever learned was when I did therapy on a very expensive old folks home, so I was dealing with the movers and the shakers of the world, people who were multi-billionaires that ran huge companies. The one thing that I took from it was that they were on the last part of their life, and they didn't talk about their companies, or how much stuff they had, or how successful they were. All they said was 'I wish I could've spent it with those that I love for a little longer.'
---
And finally, I will end with an excerpt of a speech by Sam Harris:
I want to speak to you today about death. Most of us try our best not to think about death. But all of us knows that we're just a doctor's visit away from being starkly reminded of our own mortality. I'm sure many of you know somebody who has experienced this. You must know how uncanny it is to be thrown out of the normal course of your life, and just be given the full time job of not dying. The one thing people tend to realize at moments like this is that they wasted a lot of time when life was normal. It's not just they spent too much time working or compulsively checking email. It's that they cared about the wrong things. They regret what they cared about. Their attention was bound up by petty concerns... year after year when life was normal.
And this is a paradox of course, because we all know this epiphany is coming. Don't you know this is coming? Don't you know that you'll look back on the kinds of things that captured your attention and you'll ask, what was I thinking? You know this, and if you're like most people, you'll spend most of the time in your life, tacitly presuming you will live forever. It's like watching a bad movie for the fourth time. These things only make sense in light of eternity. There better be a heaven if we're going waste our time like this. There ways to really live in the present moment. What is the alternative? It is always now. However much you may feel the need to plan for the future or mitigate risks, the reality of your life is now. This may sound tripe, but it's the truth. And we spend most of our life repudiating it, overlooking it. The horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future, and the future never arrives. We're always anticipating what is coming next. We're always trying to solve a problem. It's possible to simply drop your problem, if only for a moment, and enjoy whatever is true of your life in the present.
Jason: ...we live in a world in this industry of narcissistic champions of the world, and it's all about the singular person, whether it is Elon, Satya, Bill Gates, or whoever it is. Some people just go about it in a quiet way, and he was that guy who just went about it in a quiet way and was a mensch. We can all take a lesson, like, everyone take a note.
Owen: The best part of hearing you talk about a friend like that is that it makes you think about yourself. Man, should I be doing better? I could be doing better. I should go hug my kids this week, like extra because it's the biggest thing.
Jason: Life is very perplexing, you know? It's very perplexing when the best person you know goes first. That's what I have been struggling with the last 48 hours. Why does the guy who is the best go first? It doesn't make any sense. Then you think, gosh, the poor kids are going to have to grow up hearing the stories of how great their dad was. It's horrible and tragic, but also great that his legacy is great. Even the Facebook page is very powerful.
Leo: That's a phenomenal thing that that exists. That's a really great thing to have. His kids can read this 10 years from now.
Jason: It's just hard to comprehend. I think about the unfairness of death, and I don't know if any of us will be able to comprehend. After 911 I had this very existential crisis being a New Yorker... Like, why did these people die, and how is it fair that these people died, and what does it mean? You don't get over it, but it changes the way that you live and the way you treat people around you. A lot of you people know me because I am a public person. I haven't always been the best person, I haven't always been nice to people in my writing, I have kind of been a bit of a brawler in my life, and I have been reassessing that over the last couple of years and trying to be a better person, and better to other people.
Georgia: What will be your legacy?
Leo: Anne Lemotte wrote a book, "All New People". She said that every 100 years it's all new people. What that really reminded me of was that of course some of us go sooner than others, we are all gone sooner than later really. But what we have is remarkable is that we are all alive in this space. This was our cohort of people that we got to share the planet with. It includes people like him, like Goldie, like Steve Jobs, the people that we know around us. Some of us are going to go sooner than others, but really we are all in this cohort. This is our group, and in 100 years we are all going to be gone. So let's celebrate this cohort because we have lived with some amazing people in our group, our cohort.
Jason: And we have lived in an amazing time. I had this really deep conversation with my wife, and I was like, you know, all of the success, and I have lucked into so many great things in my life, what am I going to do with this last 10-20 years, or months, or weeks, or days? It's like, holy shit, I need to start really thinking about this.
Leo: It's not that long. Even if it's 40-50 years, it is long, but it goes by really quickly.
Georgia: The coolest thing I've ever learned was when I did therapy on a very expensive old folks home, so I was dealing with the movers and the shakers of the world, people who were multi-billionaires that ran huge companies. The one thing that I took from it was that they were on the last part of their life, and they didn't talk about their companies, or how much stuff they had, or how successful they were. All they said was 'I wish I could've spent it with those that I love for a little longer.'
---
And finally, I will end with an excerpt of a speech by Sam Harris:
I want to speak to you today about death. Most of us try our best not to think about death. But all of us knows that we're just a doctor's visit away from being starkly reminded of our own mortality. I'm sure many of you know somebody who has experienced this. You must know how uncanny it is to be thrown out of the normal course of your life, and just be given the full time job of not dying. The one thing people tend to realize at moments like this is that they wasted a lot of time when life was normal. It's not just they spent too much time working or compulsively checking email. It's that they cared about the wrong things. They regret what they cared about. Their attention was bound up by petty concerns... year after year when life was normal.
And this is a paradox of course, because we all know this epiphany is coming. Don't you know this is coming? Don't you know that you'll look back on the kinds of things that captured your attention and you'll ask, what was I thinking? You know this, and if you're like most people, you'll spend most of the time in your life, tacitly presuming you will live forever. It's like watching a bad movie for the fourth time. These things only make sense in light of eternity. There better be a heaven if we're going waste our time like this. There ways to really live in the present moment. What is the alternative? It is always now. However much you may feel the need to plan for the future or mitigate risks, the reality of your life is now. This may sound tripe, but it's the truth. And we spend most of our life repudiating it, overlooking it. The horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future, and the future never arrives. We're always anticipating what is coming next. We're always trying to solve a problem. It's possible to simply drop your problem, if only for a moment, and enjoy whatever is true of your life in the present.
